Labyrinth for iPhone review

If you've ever come across a game that involves rolling a steel ball around a maze, you'll be instantly familiar with Labyrinth for your iPhone. We take a look.

by
Macworld team
, | 02 Oct 08

Should I buy Labyrinth?

Expert's rating:

If you want to ‘kick the tires’ before putting down your money, there’s Labyrinth Lite Edition, a free version with a few levels. It’s worth a look if you’re not quite ready to make that £3.99 commitment.

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Labyrinth
full review

At some point in your life, you’ve probably toyed with a puzzle that features a steel ball you have to roll through a wooden maze. You tilt the maze board to move the ball, carefully avoiding the holes that will swallow the ball.

Using some simple but effective graphics and the iPhone and iPod touch’s accelerometer features, Labyrinth is precisely that game. The difference is that instead of just one maze, there are more than 500 levels to master.

What makes Labyrinth exceptional is that the game features really high accelerometer accuracy. You need to hold the iPhone parallel to the ground – a calibration tool in the game helps make sure you’re playing on a flat surface. Once you’re set, you’ll find that the game very closely imitates how a ‘real’ steel ball would roll around – even to the point where you can ‘slide’ the ball around the edge of a hole without letting it fall in.

Some of the mazes are challenging, while others are yawn inducing, but there are tons of them. (It took just a few seconds over WiFi for us to grab the lion’s share of them when we bought the game.)

There’s no music or sound effects here, by the way – not even the subtle roll and clunk sounds that a real Labyrinth game might have, which is a shame. The interface is austere, too. Outside of calibrating the iPhone and downloading levels, there’s no options, and the only reward you get between levels is a congratulations that you completed the level with the time indicated in seconds.